This blog was titled talking about a revolution following the song by Tracy Chapman who talked about a time when revolution accompanying the changing times would come. Now, I see this revolutionary times sitting right with us for indeed the time has come for a change in the system, for a change in the minds of people whose actions did affect us once upon a time and whose actions still influence our choices, decisions, our present and future. When I first heard of the theme for this year’s IYY which is dialogue and mutual understanding, I thought to myself that this was coming at the right time, a time where the knowledge and understanding of the subject matter of sex is seen as a measuring scale for morality, immorality or amorality. I talk about a time like now when parents do not wish to discuss sex with their children and like to wear about on their necks the necklace of self-deceit. They carry on in their hypocrisies and like to enjoy the frustrated thoughts of the fact that their children are innocent or to put in another way unknowledgeable of the on goings around them. It is sad to think that these parents refuse to embrace their roles and responsibilities to their children to discuss sex with them and so secretly wish that somehow their minds would sink into oblivion on the things and issues that affect them and take the center stage of their lives. In fact, I have seen situation where parents asks their children if they have become sexually active and secretly wish that their children would lie to them and not confirm their worst fears. How can that be? For long they have enjoyed the solitude of hiding these things they consider secrets and sacred but they do all these without the knowledge that the once trapped butterfly has flown out to wander in the open fields. The fields which they failed to till and prepare for the planting seasons. And now the time has come for the reaping. Shall we reap what we never planted or plant on thorny and a field full of weeds? We have heard tales of young people who have been tested by their parents/guardians especially their mothers and aunties for proof of chastity. Some of these methods are laughable and they include, putting a whole egg into a girl’s private part and coming up with unapproved, impracticable, Unthinkable, unimaginable and repulsive conclusions that if half of the egg goes in into her vagina, then she is unchaste and if it doesn’t, then she is the true daughter of her mother. We shall continue to fight for the enlightenment of young people and their rights in a world filled with unnecessary moral convictions and traditions that hamper the development of the mind and the environment. The time has come for mutual dialogue between culture and a changing world. The battle has begun and we shall not fail to put on the amour of knowledge to fight and wage war against ignorance and unnecessary secrecy that could cost us the journey to a world where rights, respects and responsibility will be the grund norm of the society we shall build with our fight. It is often said that war brings peace but in this case, we hope that this righteous war shall unfetter us from the shackles of culture and traditions which has bound us for so long.